Symmetry
by q345
Summary: Even in an alternate world, some memories are impossible to erase no matter how much he'd like to. Cloud/Terra


_**Author's Note: Don't own it and ("all of these quotes are Aerith's.")**_

_Symmetry_

Cloud had not thought much of her when the ten of them met in the goddess's field of melted crystal and weeping rainbows. He had split from the eclectic band of heroes as quickly as possible to spare himself from the inevitable and awkward conversations concerning his world, his feats, and himself.

He met her again in the fragmented remnants of the Planet's core. The melding of universes had birthed this aberration which resembled but was not truly the core of his memories. The oily cords of imitation Lifestream seared his sensitive eyes. Even when he clenched them shut, he could still see the green under his eyelids, all those awful shades of green—leafy like forgotten primordial forests, bitter turquoise at the bottom of a lake, the rich luminescent shade of sheer madness, and the peculiar molten emerald lurching in his clotted veins after an injection. He hated that color.

She was on her knees when he saw her. Her arms were flecked with bright blood where she had driven her nails into the flesh. "Get away!" she roared, and it seemed as though two voices were warring in her throat. One was a desperate, delicate soprano, the other fierce and ancient. Her hair was colored like limes. It streamed over her shoulders like a tangled mass of snakes and spilled all over the front of her crimson dress. Boiling air surged around her struggling form. Green and red. Red and green.

He drew his sword.

After the battle, she stretched, a feline quality still lingering in her movements, and said, "I understand. You fought me because you wanted to help me."

He sounded like his larynx had rusted when he answered. He had grown too accustomed to the internal arguments with all the whispers in his head and too unused to conversing aloud. "It's the only way I know how," he confessed.

She thanked him and described how her companion had been captured. "He promised to protect me," she explained and spread her hand over her heart to shield the irony of her statement. Her hands were white and tiny, the kind of hands which hid the terrible power they wielded. She vowed, "I have to return the favor."

He hesitated before he offered to accompany her. But she had huge, omniscient eyes and a name like the earth, so he joined her even though he was fully aware this would only lead him into trouble.

They navigated the unsteady terrain by leaping across the pedestals of decayed brown rock and butchered the mannequins they encountered. Cloud hacked at the imitations' limbs but even the fervor of his battle fever was shattered when she called a dazzling inferno from the heavens and incinerated the remaining foes. The heat of the celestial blaze scorched his exposed skin, and he fought to stifle the memories it evoked.

She almost tripped on the crumbling wreckage she had made of the pseudo-soil platform. He saw her stumble in his peripheral vision and flung out his gauntleted hand, but she did not require his protective grip. She had already regained her balance and he was too late to save her.

_("You can be my bodyguard!")_

He jerked his arm back to his side and pressed his knuckles to the cold, miraculously untarnished metal of the Buster Sword. She stared at him.

"What are you looking at?" he snapped and turned his back to her.

"Your eyes," she said. "They remind me of the sky. Who do I remind you of?"

"No one," he lied, and forced himself to face her again. "Just daydreaming." His tone failed to convince her. She smiled then, a familiar smile, one infinitely wise and entirely broken. "What's your dream, Cloud?"

Her question was almost funny. He remembered a boy with skinned knees, dwelling in an isolated mountain village that was too small for his aspirations and adorations. "I've lost mine," he said.

He told her about Firion's dream, a world full of roses, and she liked that fantasy as much as he had imagined she would. "Let's share that dream!" she declared. "A world full of my favorite flowers and my friends' favorite flowers. What flower would you want to grow there?"

"Lilies," he muttered, then dropped his shameful gaze and rubbed the back of his head.

"Purity." She pulled one of his messy blonde spikes. "How fitting for you."

All of his dreams were dead, his existence was on the verge of erasure, and Sephiroth was lurking around somewhere, waiting for him to crack up again, but Cloud kissed her anyway. Her fingers, when they touched his neck, were callused and warm. He pulled the pink ribbon out of her hair and her curls sprang loose. He drowned in green and let her tug him down. She felt like lava against him. He fumbled with the knot of her pastel skirt, his warrior hands snagged in the silk. She experienced no such difficulty with his armor. She undid the leather straps, tossed his pauldron over his shoulder, and hooked her skinny legs around his waist.

_("I want to meet you. The REAL Cloud.") _

He had never felt such need and it had never been so easy to pretend the ground was lilies and the girl underneath him was the one he would never meet again.

But she possessed a magic of her own and he could not forget for long. He slept poorly and he felt sick and hollow when they reached the harlequin's castle.

"I want to help him," she said, referring to the missing boy. Jealousy, lurid like the toxins inside of him, the ones that stole his humanity, scraped the walls of his stomach. His envy, once recognized, was replaced b self-recrimination. He was a sinner. He should be punished for continuing to breathe and feel, while all the people he failed to save were bones and ashes buried beneath an artificial town that no longer existed.

"Then let's mosey," he deadpanned.

"Wait," she said, her words brimming with sorcery. "When we get there, I must face the clown alone. Please take care of the boy but leave Kefka to me."

_("Don't worry about Sephiroth. I'll take care of him.")_

"The world full of flowers," he blurted. "I think I'd like to see you there." His clumsy statement was the closest he could come to pleading with her not to go, not to become a martyr for a world that would never understand the depths of her sacrifice.

She spread her frail hands out before her. A shower of sparks emitted from her palms, and she was suddenly cupping a lily. "I'm not who you think I am," she said and dropped the flower. It dissolved into the same ethereal starstuff that fogged up the goddess's skies. "We're not anyone's puppets anymore but you've just cut your strings. You should be extricating yourself from them, not trying to tie them to something else."

"The dream—," he objected.

"Isn't an easy one to obtain. You said so yourself." She grinned, to vanquish the reproach in her words and mask the tragic clairvoyance in her eyes with a gesture of coyness. "Let's get going," she suggested. She marched down her path, her creamy cloak veiling her silhouette. He called after her, and halted the steps that drew them apart. "One day I'd like to meet the real Terra."

In five strides he caught up to her, and captured her in his inadequate embrace. He buried his face in her hair that was scented like roses and regret. He had a new shade of green under his eyelids now. He never told her how sorry he was that he could not help her, but she already knew that.

**A/N Part II: As a devout supporter of Cloud/Tifa, I have no idea where this came from. But I like Terra and I think she needed to have a fling with someone a little more exciting than Locke. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this odd little story! Reviews are appreciated! **


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